Passing the Talmud Torch: New CDC Director
By Karl Haemers | Taboo Truth | August 21, 2023
The previous Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, submitted a letter of resignation to the Biden administration on May 5. On June 16, the Biden White House announced its “Intent to Appoint Dr. Mandy Cohen as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Walensky’s term officially ended on June 30. At this moment of writing, the date is August 20. Mandy Cohen has been the official Director of the CDC for seven weeks.
Out With the Old Boss
Walensky’s term from January 2021 to the end of June 2023 was a period of devastating ineptitude combined with profiteering and reckless power projection by herself and the agency she led. This was the period of the vaccine roll-out, and Walensky pushed vaccines as the only treatment for an over-hyped threat of a SARS-CoV-2 virus. AP said Walensky “was brought in to raise morale at the CDC, to rebuild public trust in the agency and to improve its sometimes-bumbling response to the pandemic.”
Instead Walensky claimed vaccination was necessary for everyone to prevent the spread, then later after the virus panic was diminished, the CDC declared that the vaccines never had the ability to prevent spread, only reduce symptoms. Walensky declared that it was “urgent” for pregnant “persons” (she would not say “mothers” or “women”) to get the vaccine to protect their babies and themselves. A careful reading of the CDC study Walensky referenced as a source for her recommendation stated no such thing, but declared that some safety concerns had arisen for pregnant “people” including over 20% pre-birth death of the fetus. Especially in the first and second trimester, insufficient data was available to make any recommendation. More data was needed. Walensky urged pregnant “persons” to get vaccinated anyway, making the nation’s pregnant mothers test subjects in the vaccine trial.
It was Walensky who spouted the slogan “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” to describe her claim that hospital beds were filled overwhelmingly with unvaccinated people, and that the great percentage of deaths were among the unvaccinated. See the official Press Briefing by White House COVID-19 Response Team and Public Health Officials, timestamp 37:00. “There is a clear message that is coming through: This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
The CDC’s own study showed the exact opposite, with 74% of cases in the fully vaccinated. Studies out of Israel, one of the most heavily vaccinated nations in the world at the time, also showed the great majority of people allegedly sick and dead from covid were vaccinated. Walensky was also a strong promoter of mask-wearing, even for vaccinated children attending school, when data showed children were at almost no low risk of death from the dreaded covid disease.
In a move of chutzpah, Walensky announced in August 2022 that she would “shake up” the CDC with extensive changes referred to as a “reset,” because the $12 billion agency “needs to become more nimble.” Walensky said it was her “responsibility to lead this agency to a better place.”
‘It’s not lost on me that we fell short in many ways’ responding to the coronavirus, Walensky said. ‘We had some pretty public mistakes…’
Some had hope at the time Walensky would acknowledge the CDC’s large over-reach and over-reaction to an over-hyped pandemic, doing more public health harm than good with its extreme lockdown measures — but that was false hope. Instead Walensky implemented “Increasing use of preprint scientific reports to get out actionable data, instead of waiting for research to go through peer review and publication by the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.” Walensky said she would “get rid of some of the reporting layers that exist, and I’d like to work to break down some of the silos.” Both of these measures sound like lowering the scientific standards upon which the CDC reacts, not raising them. “Altering the agency’s organization chart to undo some changes made during the Trump administration,” and establishing a new “health equity” department hardly sound like improvements either.
One critic of Walensky’s “reset,” James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., “research scientist and author, said the changes are just an escalation of the deeper problem of governmental agencies colluding with pharmaceutical companies to lower scientific testing standards.”
Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense called Walensky’s time as Director of the CDC a “contentious reign” in its “CDC Director Walensky Resigns, Ending Contentious Reign Over COVID Vaccine Policies.” This provides an accurate summary of the damage Walensky’s covid policies inflicted on American school children, businesses, families and lives.
Under Walensky, the CDC also gave false information on vaccine safety monitoring, added the COVID-19 vaccines to the childhood vaccine schedule despite known harms, withheld data on boosters from the agency’s own advisers and told pregnant women the vaccine was safe — just days after Pfizer reportedly finalized a report demonstrating it wasn’t, among other things that have outraged critics.
In her letter of resignation, Walensky said “I have never been prouder of anything I have done in my professional career.”
The White House issued its brief “Statement from President Biden on Dr. Rochelle Walensky” on the same day it received Walensky’s resignation letter, which must be seen to be believed.
“Dr. Walensky has saved lives with her steadfast and unwavering focus on the health of every American. As Director of the CDC, she led a complex organization on the frontlines (sic) of a once-in-a-generation pandemic with honesty and integrity. She marshalled (sic) our finest scientists and public health experts to turn the tide on the urgent crises we’ve faced.
“Dr. Walensky leaves CDC a stronger institution, better positioned to confront health threats and protect Americans. We have all benefited from her service and dedication to public health, and I wish her the best in her next chapter.”
Walensky’s next chapter should be spent in prison for betraying the trust of the American people. She gave no clear reason for her resignation, except to note the “waning of the covid-19 pandemic” and “the nation is at a moment of transition as emergency declarations come to an end.” On the same day of Walensky’s announced resignation, May 5, the WHO officially ended the covid “global emergency.” The U.S. ended its covid “public health emergency” on May 11.
Two days after the director transfer, on July 2, Walensky had the further chutzpah to give an interview with the Wall Street Journal, “Departing CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Warns of Politicized Science,” in which “she says public needs to be wary of misinformation.” Once again Children’s Health Defense details why this is another act of astounding hypocrisy showing how Walensky’s CDC itself highly politicized the “science” and spread dangerous misinformation.
Rochelle Walensky is Jewish, as chronicled in an essay on substack Taboo Truth. It examines previous Jewish CDC Directors Jeffrey Koplan, Tom Frieden and Anne Schuchat and their various scandals, and other Jews within the agency’s historic infrastructure, including massive funding lobbied by Jewish Home Depot owner Bernard Marcus which expanded the CDC to the bureaucratic leviathan it is today.
Our new director of the CDC is also Jewish. Her name is Mandy Cohen, and in its June 16 “Intent to Appoint Dr. Mandy Cohen as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” the Biden White House presents her credentials (most recent listed first).
- Secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services
- transformation of North Carolina’s Medicaid program and Medicaid expansion.
- Chief Operating Officer and Chief of Staff of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
- Acting-Director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight
- Affordable Care Act policy development and implementation
- medical degree from Yale School of Medicine and a Master’s (sic) in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health
Walensky was also a graduate of Harvard School of Public Health. Just as Walensky, Jewish Mandy Cohen is married to a Jewish man, Samuel Cohen, a health care regulatory attorney. He is:
“Managing Director of Health Policy at Curi Advisory, which is a full-service advisory firm that serves physicians and medical practices. Equal parts fierce physician advocates, smart business leaders, and thoughtful partners, Curi’s advisory, capital, and insurance offerings deliver valued advice…”
Mandy’s maiden name is Krauthamer, spelled differently and not likely a relation except by tribe to the Jewish Neo-Con war-monger journalist Charles Krauthammer. Mandy’s Jewish mother Susan was a nurse practitioner in an emergency room on Long Island, who inspired Mandy onto a public health path. Her Jewish father was a high school guidance counselor.
An extensive and detailed profile of Mandy Cohen emerged in the first year of the covid pandemic when she was Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS). Titled “She’s the face of NC’s fight against COVID-19. Meet Dr. Mandy Cohen, Tar Heel of the Year,” it announces “Cohen is The News & Observer’s 2020 Tar Heel of the Year, an honor that recognizes a North Carolina resident who has made lasting and significant contributions in the state and beyond.” This humanizing puff piece states, “Cohen has become the figurative and literal face of North Carolina’s ongoing fight against COVID-19.”
“It is a fight in which she’s relied most upon data and science and something less easily quantified: the sense of empathy and compassion that some closest to her say make her a perfect fit for her position. It is a fight that’s challenged her to balance competing interests — one that at times has brought fierce criticism from skeptics who dismiss science or downplay the virus — while maintaining the goal of preserving the health and lives of North Carolinians.”
According to North Carolina Dept. of Health and Human Services, using my own simple calculation, over the past year the case fatality rate from Covid-19 amounts to .4%. This means 3,903 people in North Carolina died with covid over the past year (not necessarily from covid, and according to flawed PCR test diagnostics acknowledged by the CDC itself). Open VAERS shows that 179 people in North Carolina have been reported slain by the vaccine since its roll-out in early 2021 until June 16 of this year (the same date the White House announced intention to appoint Cohen CDC director).
Recall that the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS) was shown by the CDC’s own funded study in 2010 to report less than 1% of actual adverse vaccine events. The number of people slain in North Carolina by the vaccine could be more honestly at least 18,000. To compare these numbers—covid-killed vs. vaccine-killed—we should divide 18,000 by 2.5, since the covid-killed number is only for one year (the mildest year), and the vaccine-killed for 2.5 years. Answer: at least 7,200 vaccine-killed per year compared to under 4,000 per year covid-killed. The cure may have been at least almost twice as lethal as the disease.
As the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were scheduled to arrive in North Carolina, Cohen addressed her staff. “So that tells me a couple things… One, no one else is talking about vaccines and sort of setting the stage and being transparent. So, A-plus, team. … We’re setting expectations. We’re sharing what we know. We’re being concrete. We’re talking about all our plans, so I’m really pleased.”
Yes, A-plus, team. Mandy is really pleased you were talking about vaccines and being transparent. Unfortunately for the thousands slaughtered by the vaccines in North Carolina and their families, you were not transparent about the carnage the vaccines could cause in the state. Cohen’s “sense of empathy and compassion” made her a perfect fit for that job.
Cohen’s Jewish identity is featured:
“She spent most of the next hour listening to her staff members detail their work. By the time the meeting was ending, Cohen had changed her virtual background to that of a picture of her family for some Throwback Thursday show-and-tell. The picture was from her oldest daughter’s baby-naming ceremony, a Jewish ritual, and the family was standing in front of a menorah.
“‘Throwback Thursday and Hanukkah,’ Cohen said with some excitement, introducing her family.
“Like her family, her faith has played an important role in helping her navigate the pandemic. She wears a necklace with the chai (pronounced like “high”) symbol around her neck. The symbol represents the Hebrew word for life and health.
“When Cohen and her husband moved to North Carolina, they did not know anyone. The synagogue they chose became a second home. “And I also joke with the rabbi that I think Jews were public health people before they knew what public health was,” Cohen said, referencing Jewish dietary restrictions, and how even before the pandemic there was “a lot of washing your hands in Jewish ritual practices.
“Back on the work call, Cohen wished a Happy Hanukkah to those celebrating. It was the first night of the festival, and she needed to hurry home.”
If Cohen’s “faith” is even remotely Talmudic-influenced, the chai symbol represents the Hebrew word for life and health to Jews, and death and sickness for Goyim. Washing hands in Jewish rituals may sometimes be a necessity to cleanse away the blood from the male genital mutilation ceremony of circumcision, cruel animal sacrifices, and Jewish Ritual Murder that includes drinking the blood of raped, tortured and slaughtered children. Cohen of course does not allude specifically to these Talmudic blood rituals, but the hand-washing associated with them could hardly have made such extreme Talmudic fundamentalist Jews “public health people.”
Cohen cannot be accused of these Judaic horrors, but just as with Walensky, nor can she be trusted with a “sense of empathy and compassion” while wearing a Hebrew symbol of life and health. Chai means “to live and walk in the Jewish cultural lifestyle,” and also “the lowest (closest to the physical plane) emanation of God.” She may be worshiping a Hebrew god who seems more like a demon, demanding blood, insanely jealous, viciously punitive to a genocidal extent, and intolerably racist.
The ever-alert Children’s Health Defense, in commenting on Cohen’s appointment to CDC director, did not take its criticism so far, but it is indicative that CHD called Cohen “fanatic.” In “‘Fanatic?’: Biden’s New CDC Director Was Strong Proponent of Pandemic Mandates, Masks and Lockdowns,” author Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. quotes critics who have emerged throughout the covid years 2020-21 as voices of medical scientific reason.
“Cohen appears to be fully entrenched in the ‘bio-pharmaceutical complex.’ She was on the wrong side of every pandemic public health intervention, failed to recognize early therapeutics and natural immunity, and to date has not acknowledged the safety disaster unfolding with the COVID-19 mass, indiscriminate, vaccination program.”
-Dr. Peter McCullough, author The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex
“(Cohen is) a public health COVID authoritarian and the worst possible person to become the next CDC head.”
-Alex Berenson, commentator and former New York Times journalist
Berenson is Jewish, and in his own article, “URGENT: Joe Biden is about to pick the worst possible person to become the next CDC head,” said something Nevradakis did not include:
“Apparently diversity mandates haven’t hit the CDC yet. Cohen is a lot like Walensky, a nice Jewish* doctor** from the Northeastern suburbs with all the right degrees.
“(*I can say it, I’m Jewish)
“(**The actual expression is “nice Jewish girl” but I don’t want to get in trouble)”
Berenson is suing Andy Slavitt, Jewish (not found in “early life and education,” but at the end in Categories, “American Jews”), over censorship infringements. Slavitt started out at Goldman-Sachs investment bank, and ended up senior adviser on President Joe Biden’s coronavirus response team.
Returning to quotes in the CHD article:
“Going through [Cohen’s] timeline is a strange blast from the past of heartbreaking fear-mongering, pseudo-science, and propaganda. She passed with flying colors all three tests of compliance: closures, masking, and vaccine mandates.”
– Jeffrey A. Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute
In his essay, “New CDC Director Is Another Lockdowner,” Tucker starts by telling us that in order to have power and influence in the Soviet Union, one needed to be a member of the Communist party.
“We are headed this way in the US today. The party in question is the lockdown party. … That’s my best read on why Mandy Cohen is being pulled away from her perch in North Carolina, where she led a catastrophic pandemic response, to be the replacement for Rochelle Walensky as head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is a faithful member of the lockdown party and thus demonstrates her willingness to do it again should the occasion arise.”
My best read is that both Walensky and Cohen are members of the Jewish party, with lockdowns as their strategy to advance Jewish profit and control objectives. Their willingness to do it again is rooted in their faithfulness to Jews and Judaic indoctrination. The occasion will arise because they will engineer one again. For a wider analysis of the Jewish role in covid, see the TOO book review “New Covid Book Tackles Taboo Truths.”
CHD/Nevradakis: “Cohen was ‘the top choice of Jeffrey D. Zients,’ the Biden administration’s former COVID-19 response coordinator.”
Zients is of course Jewish as well, suggesting the well-known phenomenon of Jewish tribal nepotism in appointing Cohen. Zients went from COVID-19 response coordinator, “charged with rolling out a massive vaccine program nationwide in early 2021,” to the current White House Chief of Staff, “like the chief operating officer for the government.”
Zients replaces Ron Klain, also Jewish.
“Jewish Ron Klain has been Joe Biden’s political alter ego for many of the last 40 years, regardless of his position or Biden’s interaction with Jews and Israel,” Democratic Party strategist Steve Rabinowitz said, adding: “Along the way, Klain has proven himself as friendly to our community and to Israel as we are with his old/new boss.”
Closely similar to Zients, and generally similar to Walensky and Cohen, Klain formerly took charge of a “pandemic response” to another disease scare in 2014, as Obama’s “Ebola Czar,” according to the Jewish Forward. Given the general Jewish hatred of the Russian Czars, I struggle to understand why these Jews apply this term to themselves when they lead “pandemic response” efforts. Perhaps to further defame the long-dead Czars, but doesn’t this also defame themselves?
CHD/Nevradakis quotes:
“Dr. Mandy Cohen during her tenure as North Carolina’s HHS secretary pushed through the most draconian COVID-19 measures imaginable.
“With her at the helm of the CDC, I expect we will just get more lying and hiding regarding the agency’s abysmal response to the pandemic and horrific track record in general.”
-Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., senior director of science and research for Children’s Health DefenseCohen was particularly harsh on children in North Carolina, imposing mask mandates in school regardless of vaccination status, extending school closures longer than most other states, and threatening to sue a county school board if it did not “rescind a new policy that eliminates COVID-19 quarantine measures for most students and staff.” All this after it was known that children were at almost zero risk from covid. In “studies of children (that) are the most comprehensive yet anywhere in the world,” 2 in a million children died of covid, and most of those had “co-morbidities.”
Combine Walensky’s damage to unborn babies in the womb with Cohen’s damage to school-age children, and these two Jewish lockdown/vaccine “fanatics” covered the entire childhood age range with trauma and death, for no valid reason.
Adolescent suicides spiked during the pandemic. In North Carolina under Cohen’s lockdown reign, “youth” suicides spiked, attempts up 46% among 10-14 year old girls in 2021. Cohen continued to impose among the harshest school lockdown measures in the nation, motivated no doubt by her Jewish “sense of empathy and compassion.”
When they heard rumors that the Biden Administration—itself overwhelmingly Jewish—was planning to propose Cohen as CDC director, a group of 28 Congresspeople (24 men including a Senator and a Representative from North Carolina, and 4 women including Marjorie Taylor Greene) issued a joint letter to the President dated June 13 2023. They state:
“Dr. Cohen is unfit for the position. Throughout her career, Dr. Cohen has politicized science, disregarded civil liberties, and spread misinformation about the efficacy and necessity of COVID vaccinations … and the necessity of masks.
“… Dr. Cohen was a proponent of unnecessary, unscientific COVID restrictions on school children… After a North Carolina school district followed the science by declining to institute unscientific mask mandates and voted with an overwhelming majority to end “contact tracing” and curtail other unproven and largely hysterical quarantine policies, Dr. Cohen threatened to bring legal action against the district. Dr. Cohen’s willingness to threaten the school district put politics over the well-being of children and is just another example of the litany of public health abuses the American people endured at the hands of bureaucrats throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The letter continues:
“Dr. Cohen has an extensive history of publicly… supporting radical, left-wing policies … (She) endorsed an unconstitutional ban on semi-automatic rifles and lobbied to classify climate change as a ‘public health crisis.’”
“Given her strong affiliation with… the COVID-19 lockdowns, it will be difficult for the American people to trust Dr. Cohen to run the CDC as a nonpartisan actor who makes objective decisions rooted in scientific data, and not in political expediency.”
Or Jewish Talmudic “science tikkun” as espoused by militant Jewish vaccine promoter Peter Hotez. In 2020 as secretary of NCDHHS, Cohen said in an interview with Religious News Service : “There’s so much of what I do in the health and human services space that’s so aligned with Jewish values of healing the world.” Healing the world is dangerously close to the Judaic concept of tikkun olam: fixing the world. The article further states: “It (wearing the Hebrew Chai necklace) is a testament to her faith — she is Jewish — and, in this strange pandemic moment, to her religious values.”
And: “As the Jewish High Holidays approach, Cohen said she looks forward to the time of reflection and introspection — the themes of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur — especially as they relate to her public work.” This ten day period between Judaic holy days includes a day of judgment where the fate of the wicked is decided. It is a time of reflection and repentance. As the wicked witch of North Carolina health and death, Cohen had much upon which to reflect and repent.
Dale Folwell is running for North Carolina governor. He tweeted:
“… the actions of Dr. Mandy Cohen during Covid resulted in more disease, death, poverty and illiteracy. As NC Governor, I would be hard pressed to ever follow her lead at CDC if chosen by the POTUS.”
The tweet was on June 2, two days after Cohen officially became Director of the CDC.
Private Sector, Monied Interests
In the short time between her resignation from NCDHHS in November 2021 and her appointment to CDC Director on July 1, 2023, Cohen was the Executive Vice President of Aledade, “the nation’s largest network of independent primary care practices.” She was also the Chief Executive Officer of Aledade Care Solutions, “the company’s new health services unit.” Aledade’s Executive Team’s webpage still lists Cohen as EVP and CEO of the Care Solutions new unit.
The Department of Justice lists under Government Ethics, Conflicts of Interest:
“An employee is prohibited from participating personally and substantially in a matter in which he, his spouse, minor child, or a general partner, or an organization of which he is an officer, director, trustee, partner or employee has a financial interest.”
Or she, in Cohen’s case. We must watch her closely for conflicts of interest, since her Jewish predecessor Walensky was identified in just such a conflict in 2021 soon before and after her appointment to CDC director. In “CDC Director Walensky’s Husband Received $5 Million in HHS Grants – and That’s Just the Start of It,” we see the insider connections, including Fauci, and another NIAID official who was on the oversight committee that approved the grant, both of whom worked with Rochelle in her time at CDC before she became director. They funneled a large research grant to Rochelle’s husband Loren’s private biotech firm Lytica Therapeutics. He is shown on the Team webpage as “Scientific Cofounder” and his bio states he is “Professor Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program.”
Also on the team is a Daniel Cohen, PhD, Associate Principal Scientist, Protein Chemistry. Mandy’s Wikipedia entry shows in its Early Life section, she “has two younger siblings.” The “Tar Heel of the Year” article says, “Her brother’s family just had a baby in May…” Certainly we see many Cohens throughout the Jewish power structure, and cannot verify that Daniel has any direct relation to Mandy except by tribe.
Hebrew name Cohen means Priest, descended from Aaron.
Cohen’s CDC Promotes “Chest Milk”
Such speculation is unnecessary. Cohen’s depravity emerged within a week of taking office when numerous news reports quoted the CDC stating: “transgender and nonbinary-gendered individuals may give birth and breastfeed or feed at the chest (chestfeed).” This ignited outrage from the nation’s mothers, Republican party candidates, Fox News and many others.
Not surprisingly, links to the CDC statement in these reports go nowhere or in circles now, but one prominent mention found on the CDC official website says under “Priority Breastfeeding Strategy: Continuity of Care” – “Review (of) Continuity of Care in Breastfeeding Support; a Blueprint for Communities” document: “Create community environments that proactively promote, protect, and support chest/breastfeeding.”
It is under “Health Equity Considerations” where we find the horrifying statement under “Pronoun Use – Remember That:” There is more. “An individual does not need to have given birth to breastfeed or chestfeed. Some families may have other preferred terminology for how they feed their babies, such as nursing, chestfeeding, or bodyfeeding.”
In an established pattern of recklessness endangering the nation’s children and mothers, Cohen failed to warn of the dangers to babies from synthetic hormone-induced “chest milk.” The synthetic hormone no longer recommended for increasing natural female lactation but recommended (not by name) for transsexual “chest feeding” Domperidone is a known risk to babies.
Cohen’s tribal colleagues the Jewish Pritzker family rules the transsexual transition industry with billions of dollars in grants, investments, donations and profits to impose the unholy inhuman agenda. Family oligarch Tom Pritzker was only one of two names listed in Jewish Epstein’s notorious black book with a special hand-written note: “Numero Uno.”
Caution: Another Jew Leads CDC
We have seen excessive evidence that the new CDC director Mandy Cohen will inflict whatever catastrophic lockdown measures and vaccine mandates the next contrived disease panic offers to further Jewish objectives, just as previous CDC director Rochelle Walensky.
May we all take caution. Not viruses, but certain Jews acting in coordination have infected the governmental power structure with the capability of inducing sickness and death by unelected, arbitrary and capricious decree. The cure is truly worse than the disease. The new CDC director Mandy Cohen, driven by her Judaic faith, now leads the most powerful Federal agency imposing public health/death measures.
May we turn to a more natural, holistic health model to survive her impending reign of terror at CDC.
Ukraine must seek ceasefire with Russia now – ex-presidential aide
RT | August 23, 2023
Ukraine should hasten to end hostilities with Russia before the flow of American military and financial aid to the country dries up, a former aide to two Ukrainian presidents has said.
In a video on his YouTube channel posted on Tuesday, Oleg Soskin, who served as an economic adviser to Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma in the 1990s, described the US as “the key country” in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, arguing that if it cuts off its military assistance to Kiev, the latter will sign some kind of agreement with Moscow “within days.”
Against this backdrop, Soskin suggested that the US Congress may refuse to rubberstamp the request of US President Joe Biden to provide Kiev with an additional $24 billion in assistance, citing reports of growing reluctance among Republicans to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
“Basically, this means that the House [of Representatives] will not pass this $24 billion. They think the situation is at a complete impasse. That’s why Ukraine won’t get any money,” he said.
If the US, which has already provided Kiev with tens of billions of dollars in various forms of aid, were to stop helping Ukraine, its NATO allies, including Germany, Britain and all other European countries, would follow suit, crippling Kiev’s military potential, the ex-official noted.
“I think that [Ukraine] should stop before the US does that,” Soskin said, suggesting that “there should be a meeting of smart people in Ukraine who would be more forward-looking” than Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his small group of what he called “war chanters.”
Soskin also noted that the Ukrainian army has already lost the backbone of its seasoned troops, with replacements being prone to serious morale issues. He said that Kiev is forcibly drafting inexperienced soldiers who are reluctant to fight. “Ukrainians lack the motivation they had in the past year and a half,” he pointed out, suggesting that, under these conditions, Kiev stands little chance against the Russian army.
The ex-official’s comments come on the heels of a recent Politico report that said “even pro-Ukraine Republicans are hedging against supporting” a new assistance package for Ukraine, with Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland noting that Kiev “can’t win the war and, therefore, the US should reconsider further stocking its defenses.”
New Memos Hint at Biden’s Personal Interest in Firing Ukraine Prosecutor Targeting Burisma
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 22.08.2023
New memos indicate that then-Vice President Joe Biden did not act in concert with the US government when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in Ukraine aid unless the Poroshenko government fired the prosecutor general who targeted Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian employer at that time.
Joe Biden and Democrats have repeatedly stressed that his insistence on firing Ukrainian then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokhin back in December 2015 was consistent with the US policy of stamping out corruption in Ukraine.
At the time, then-Vice President Joe Biden even went so far as to threaten then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that Washington would deprive Ukraine of a much-needed $1 billion loan guarantee in case the latter did not fire Shokhin. The conversation reportedly occurred in December 2015. Biden openly bragged about the incident to the Council on Foreign Relations gathering in January 2018:
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
However, memos by Treasury and Justice Department officials obtained by Just the News, an independent US media outlet founded by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon, indicate that the US government held Shokhin in high regard at the time and concluded that Ukraine had made progress in fighting endemic corruption, thus deserving the loan guarantee.
“Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee,” read an October 1, 2015, memo by the Interagency Policy Committee (IPC), a Barack Obama task force.
Moreover, Senior State Department officials sent Shokhin a personal note saying they were “impressed” with his office’s work and invited him and his staff to Washington for a January 2016 strategy session prior to his sacking.
Remarkably, an audio tape from March 2016 which appeared to record Biden and Poroshenko’s conversation showed that the Ukrainian president pointed out that there was no evidence that Shokhin and his office were anyhow mired in corruption:
“Despite the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I especially asked him … No, it was the day before yesterday. I especially asked him to resign,” Poroshenko allegedly told Biden in a tape released in 2020 by then-parliamentarian Andrii Derkach.”
Per Solomon, Biden’s political maneuver stemmed from the fact that the latter had been aggressively investigating Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas firm that hired Joe’s son Hunter in 2014 and paid him a hefty salary of $83,333 a month despite Hunter having no expertise or experience in the energy sphere.
What’s more, Hunter’s business associate Devon Archer, who was also employed by Burisma at the time, testified to the House Oversight Committee on July 31 that Shokhin’s investigation was rattling the Ukrainian gas firm and that the Burisma leadership was putting pressure on Hunter to deal with it.
Joe Biden’s role in firing Shokhin created much controversy in 2019, when House Democrats pushed ahead with the impeachment of then-President Donald Trump who asked Poroshenko’s successor, Volodymyr Zelensky, to look into the Bidens’ conduct in a phone conversation.
Democratic lawmakers and officials testified during Trump’s first impeachment that Joe’s actions in withholding the $1 billion in aid had nothing to do with Hunter and were thoroughly consistent with the US government’s Ukraine policy. Per Solomon, this narrative appears to be false.
The US investigative journalist specifically quoted lawyers who worked on Trump’s impeachment defense. They said that they didn’t have access to the memos unearthed by Just the News, showing that the Obama government was satisfied with Shokhin’s work. As per Trump’s former legal team, the documents in question would have made a significant difference to the Trump impeachment case.
The Democratic Party’s apparent attempts to shield Biden, who announced his presidential bid on April 25, 2019, seemingly fit into a broader set of actions by US officials, Biden campaign aides, intelligence operatives, Big Tech and Big Media to suppress any narrative which could cast a shadow on the Bidens’ conduct.
In October 2020, a concerted action by the former top brass of US intelligence agencies, Silicon Valley giants and the US mainstream press smeared a legitimate story by the New York Post stemming from files of a so-called “laptop from hell”, belonging to Hunter Biden, as “Russian disinformation”. It turned out later that the damning materials on the infamous laptop were genuine.
Neocons and Other Malignancies in the American Body Politic
They will never give up until we’re all dead
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 22, 2023
It is interesting to observe how, over the past twenty-five years, the United States has become not only a participant in wars in various places on the planet but has also evolved into being the prime initiator of most of the armed conflict. Going back to the Balkans in the nineteen-nineties and moving forward in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Somalia there is almost always an American leading role where there is bombing and killing. And where there is no actual war, there are threats and sanctions intended to make other nations come to heel, be they in Latin America like Venezuela, or Iran in the Middle East, or North Korea in Asia. And then there is the completely senseless act of turning major competitors like Russia and China, as we are now seeing, into enemies, with a proxy war raging in Ukraine, threats over Taiwan, and the world moving one step closer to a nuclear disaster.
It seems to me that the transition from an America bumbling its way into war and the current situation where wars are pursued as a matter of course coincides with a certain political development in the United States, which is the rise of neoconservatives as the foreign and national security policy makers in both major parties. This has developed together with the evolution of the view that the United States can do no wrong by definition, indeed, that it has a unique and God-given right to establish and police the globe through something that it invented, exploits and has dubbed the “rules based international order.”
Who would have thought that a bunch of Jewish student-activists, mostly leftists, originally conspiring in a corner of the cafeteria in the City College of New York would create a cult type following that now aspires to rule the world? The neocons became politically most active in the 1960s and eventually some of them attached themselves to the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan, declaring their evolution had come about because they were “liberals mugged by reality.” The neoconservative label was first used to describe their political philosophy in 1973. Since that time, they have diversified and succeeded in selling their view to a bipartisan audience that the US should embrace an aggressive interventionist foreign policy and must be the world hegemon. To be sure their desire for overwhelming military power has been strongly shaped by their tribal cohesion which has fed a compulsion to have Washington serve as the eternal protector of Israel, but the hegemonistic approach has inevitably led to expanding conflict all over the world and a willingness to challenge, confront and defeat other existing great powers. Hence the support for a needless and pointless war in Ukraine to “weaken Russia” and a growing conflict with China over Taiwan to do the same in Asia. To make sure that the Republicans do not waver on that mission, leading neocon Bill Kristol has recently raised $2 million to do some heavy lobbying to make sure that they stay on track to confront the Kremlin in Europe.
One of the leading neocon families is the Kagans, who have successfully penetrated and come to dominate the establishment foreign policy centers in both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Victoria Nuland nee Nudelman, the wife of Robert Kagan, is entrenched at the State Department where she is now the Deputy Secretary, the number two position. Up until recently, she was one of the top three officials at State, all of whom were and are Jewish Zionists. Indeed, under Joe Biden Zionist Jews dominate the national security structure, to include the top level of the State Department, the head of Homeland Security, the Attorney General, the National Security Adviser, the Director of National Intelligence, the President’s Chief of Staff, and the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Nuland’s hawkish appeal is apparently bipartisan as she has served in senior positions under Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Joe Biden. As adviser to Cheney, she was a leading advocate of war with Iraq, working with other Jewish neocons Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz at Defense and also Scooter Libby in the Vice President’s office. As there was no actual threat to the US from Saddam Hussein she and her colleagues invented one, the WMD that they sold to the media and to idiots like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Nuland is also considered to be close to Hillary Clinton and the recently deceased ghastly former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. All of her government assignments have included either invading or severely sanctioning some country considered by her and her colleagues to be unfriendly. She particularly hates the Russians and anyone who is hostile to Israel.
Apparently, Nuland’s record of being seriously wrong in the policies she promoted has only served to improve her resume in Washington’s hawkish foreign policy establishment and when Biden came into the presidency she found herself appointed to the number three position at the State Department as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Her return to power with the Democrats might also be due in part to the activism of her husband Robert, currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, who was one of the first neocons to get on the NeverTrump band wagon back in 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and spoke at a Washington fundraiser for her, complaining about the “isolationist” tendency in the Republican Party exemplified by Trump. Robert famously has never seen a war he disapproved of and, while urging Europe to do more defense spending, commented that “When it comes to use of military force “Americans are from Mars, and Europeans are from Venus.” Robert’s brother Frederick, a Senior Fellow at the neocon American Enterprise Institute, and Frederick’s wife Kimberly, who heads the bizarrely named Institute for the Study of War, are also regarded as neocon royalty.
Nuland is particularly well known for her being the driving force behind the regime change in Ukraine in 2014 that replaced the fairly-elected but friendly-to-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych with a selected candidate more accommodating to the US and Western Europe. Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe, has been unstable ever since and the current war, also initiated by interference from the US and UK, has brought about the deaths and wounding of an estimated half million Ukrainians and Russians.
Nuland was recently in Africa, stirring up developments in Niger, which has experienced a recent military coup that removed a president who was corrupt but also a friend of the US and France, both of which have troops stationed in the country. As I write this, a number of African nations (ECOWAS) friendly to US and French interests in the region are gathering together their own military force to reverse the coup, but there is little enthusiasm for the project. We will see how that turns out, but predictably Nuland is advertising a possible intervention as a “restoration of democracy.”
And there is more over the horizon with neocons like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Nuland in charge of US foreign policy and supported by most of congress and a Jewish dominated media and entertainment industry. Joe Biden is too weak and too much under the thumb of the Israel Lobby to pursue any policies that would be beneficial to the American people in general, so the course will be set by the current crop of zealots, just as Donald Trump was guided by his Christian Zionist advisers.
If you want to understand just how what remains of our republic is in a bus being driven over the cliff by a group that has no regard for most of the citizens of the country that they reside in, one only has to read some of what passes for neocon analysis of what must be done to make America “safe.” Not surprisingly, it also involves Israel and a war on behalf of the Jewish state.
One astonishingly audacious article that appeared on August 13th in The Hill entitled “If Israel strikes Iran over its nuclear program, the US must have its back,” gives Israel the option of starting a war for any or no reason with the United States compelled to join in in support. It was written Michael Makovsky, a well-known Jewish neocon, and Chuck Wald. Makovsky is President and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) while Wald is a former general who also is affiliated with that group as a “distinguished fellow,” which means he is getting paid generously to serve as a mouthpiece providing credibility for the group. For those unfamiliar with The Hill, it is an inside the beltway defense contractor funded online magazine that pretends to be serious but which is actually an integral part of the status quo Zionist and war-on-demand network. That the Jewish Institute for National Security is “of America” is, of course, a characteristically clever euphemism.
The article begins with “The Biden administration should learn from its unpreparedness for the Russia-Ukraine war and begin to prepare for a major Israel-Iran conflict. The administration needs to set aside its differences with the Israeli government, overcome its aversion to conflict with Iran, and begin to work closely with Jerusalem to prepare for the growing likelihood that Israel will feel it has no choice but to initiate a military campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. In ‘No Daylight,’ a new report from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA)… retired senior military officers and national security experts explain that whatever differences the US might now have with Israel over Iran policy, our two countries’ interests will be aligned after an Israeli strike. Consequently, in preparing its response, the U.S. guiding principle should be ‘no daylight with Israel,’ to ensure Israeli military success, mitigate Iranian retaliation and limit the scope of the conflict — vital interests for both countries.”
That war with Iran is a “vital interest” for the United States is, of course, not really explained as the point is to let Israel to decide on the issue of war and peace for the United States. The article then trots out the old “credibility” argument, i.e. that if we don’t go to war no one will ever trust our security guarantees: “A US betrayal of its close Israeli ally, at a time of great peril for the Jewish state, would be ‘one of the greatest catastrophes ever,’ an Arab leader told us privately recently. Because Israel is widely perceived as a close American ally, the US stance as Israel risks thousands of casualties in defense of its very existence, will resound broadly. Strong American support will reassure allies from Warsaw to Abu Dhabi and Taipei; American equivocation will shred Washington’s credibility and embolden adversaries from Tehran to Moscow and Beijing.”
One would love to know who the anonymous Arab leader so concerned about Israel is and, of course, the Jewish state is not in fact an American ally apart from in the fertile imaginations of congressmen, the media and the White House. And Israel will, of course, need more weapons and money from the US taxpayer to include “expediting delivery to Israel of KC-46A tankers, precision-guided munitions, F-15 and F-35 aircraft, and air and missile defenses… Washington should accelerate building integrated regional air, missile and maritime defenses against persistent Iranian threats.” And America must be prepared to expand the war: “Privately, Iranian and Hezbollah leadership should be warned that heavy retaliation against Israel… will prompt severe Israeli and/or American responses that could threaten their very grasp on power. Upon commencement of an Israeli strike, the United States should promptly resupply Israel with Iron Dome interceptors, precision-guided munitions, ammunition and spare parts, and deploy Patriot air defenses to Israel…”
So the United States must be prepared to turn over its national security to Israel in exchange for what gain for Americans? In part it would apparently involve “finding a permanent solution to Iran’s illegal nuclear weapons program” which is based on a lie even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been repeating for over 20 years that Iran is only six months away from a weapon. Both the CIA and Mossad have confirmed that Iran has no such program while Israel does have a secret illegal nuclear arsenal built using enriched uranium and nuclear triggers stolen from the US. The article concludes with another reference to the non-existing program, claiming “the most effective way to address Iran’s nuclear program already has been articulated by President Biden and communicated by America’s ambassador in Jerusalem: ‘Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with it, and we’ve got their back.’”
Supporting Israeli war crimes is not the way to go. As Chris Hedges puts it correctly, there is no compelling American interest in damaging itself by supporting Israel blindly, quite the contrary: “The long nightmare of oppression of Palestinians is not a tangential issue. It is a black and white issue of a settler-colonial state imposing a military occupation, horrific violence and apartheid, backed by billions of US dollars, on the indigenous population of Palestine. It is the all powerful against the all powerless. Israel uses its modern weaponry against a captive population that has no army, no navy, no air force, no mechanized military units, no command and control and no heavy artillery, while pretending intermittent acts of wholesale slaughter are wars.”
And, of course, while Israel engages in slaughter and torture it always portrays itself as the victim only engaged in fighting against “terrorists.” I have a better idea for where we should go with all of this. President Joe Biden should be impeached for ignoring war powers legislation and indicating that he is willing to sacrifice US interests and kill American soldiers, few or plausibly none of whom will actually be Jewish since it is not an occupation that attracts them, to please and support a manifestly evil foreign government. And Donald Trump should also be punished for having done much the same type of pandering to a foreign country while in office. Meanwhile, haul Makovsky and Wald together with their buddies at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) down to the Justice Department and put them in jail for violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) in that they are willfully acting as agents of a foreign government and are operating corruptly to serve the interests of that government. The criminals at AIPAC are already using their associated PACs to oust targeted members of Congress up for re-election in 2024 who have in any way been critical of Israel or pro-Palestinian. And while you’re at it Mr. Attorney General Merrick Garland nee Garfinkel, please have Mr. Blinken and Ms. Nuland pop by for a chat just for starters and see how far you can make the laws apply to those in power. There is some confusion evident here as Israel is not part of the United States, no matter how politically dominant and wealthy its lobby might be. Time to put an end to this nonsense and call it out for what it is – it is treason.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Leaked documents indicate Zelensky about to be replaced
By Lucas Leiroz | August 22, 2023
It seems increasingly clear that the West wants to replace Zelensky. In addition to several predictions by experts that the Ukrainian president will be removed from power, it is now revealed that some previously leaked Pentagon documents expose a plan to make the mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko, the new head of state.
The documents were leaked months ago when several secret US Department of Defense’s files were exposed by Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old soldier working at the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Being employed in the information technology sector, Teixeira had access to several classified government data, having leaked many of them. In April, Teixeira was arrested and is expected to be sentenced to around 10 years in prison.
What was not known until now is that among the documents there was a letter in which a Pentagon official showed his interest in putting someone more competent than Zelensky to take the presidency in Ukraine. In addition, Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland herself is apparently also involved in this plan, having expressed her personal desire to see Vitali Klitschko as president. In a certain part of the document, there is an open call for “creating conditions” to elect Vitali in 2024.
“The letter, dated February 22, 2023, states that the leadership of the US State Department, as well as top officials of the US Department of Defense, are not happy with Ukrainian President Zelensky and are planning his exchange as President of Ukraine, for the ex-boxer Vitali Klitschko as his replacement in 2024 (…) According to the letter, the leadership of the Pentagon expresses agreement with an opinion of the United States Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland that Zelensky is ‘exhausting his political capacity rapidly’. Judging by the letter, both Department of Defense and Department of State would like to see the former boxer and an active participant of the events of 2014 Maidan coup d’état Vitali Klitschko, now the mayor of Kiev, as the President of Ukraine”, Dutch journalist Sonja van den Ende wrote.
Former boxer and a famous supporter of the neo-Nazi regime, Vitali Klitschko has governed the city of Kiev since the 2014 coup d’état. He gained notoriety in the international media for his “patriotism” after the start of Russia’s special military operation, when he stated that he would “take up arms” with his brother, Vladimir, to defend the Ukrainian capital and repel the Russian “invaders”. Portrayed by Western newspapers as “courageous” and “heroic”, Klitschko has won the sympathy of many Westerners, which explains why some figures now want him as the new head of state.
However, Klitschko is not the only name on the list of predictions to replace Zelensky. There are several reports that point to different people as possible candidates for the Ukrainian presidency. Previously, names like the Commander in Chief of Ground Forces Alexander Syrsky, Ukrainian intelligence head Kirill Budanov and Armed Forces Commander Valeri Zaluzhnyi have been mentioned as possible candidates for Zelensky’s office. More recently, western media outlets have suggested that the Ukrainian president would be replaced, not by another individual head of state, but by a team of officials led by the head of parliament Ruslan Stefanchuck.
Apparently, there is still no consensus on who may be the new president of Ukraine. But the consensus is real about the Western desire to remove Zelensky. For Western authorities and media, Zelensky is already a problematic and negative public figure. As stated in the documents, the Ukrainian president is “exhausting his political capacity rapidly”. This is due to his constant unjustified “beggar” behavior towards his NATO partners, in addition to the repeated military failures and territorial losses.
The possibilities of justifying Zelensky’s actions through mere propaganda are running out, which is why he is likely to be removed. In this sense, Vitali Klitschko seems to sound more interesting to Kiev’s international partners. His image seems more positive than Zelensky’s for public opinion, which tends to legitimize among citizens the continuity of the military assistance policy. In other words, in order to continue to wage the proxy war against Russia, the West needs someone more competent, less criticized than Zelensky.
It remains to be seen how Zelensky would be removed. Being a dictatorial regime under martial law, it is difficult for changes to occur through electoral and democratic means. Recently, in an article published by Politico, it was suggested that Zelensky could be assassinated and some officials even have a “secret plan” to be followed in case this happens.
Considering that plans to replace him have been in the works since at least February – as leaked documents show – and that the media is already talking about a possible assassination, Zelensky could be killed and his death falsely blamed on Russia. The move looks like an attempt to prepare public opinion for a false flag operation legitimizing a new escalation.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Western Media Is Nowadays Talking About How Fatigued & Frustrated Ukrainians Have Become
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | AUGUST 22, 2023
Average Westerners were told for the past 18 months how fearless and optimistic the Ukrainians were, which was done to convince the former to continue supporting their leaders’ decision to fund the latter, but now the Mainstream Media (MSM) is telling them the complete opposite. The Washington Post wrote earlier this month that “Slow counteroffensive darkens mood in Ukraine”, which was followed by The Economist declaring that “Ukraine’s sluggish counter-offensive is souring the public mood”.
These four major updates were shared in the 10-day period between those two pieces:
* Washington Post : “U.S. intelligence says Ukraine will fail to meet offensive’s key goal”
* CNN: “Ukraine’s recent focus on Crimea draws skepticism from corners of the Biden administration”
* Washington Post : “Ukraine running out of options to retake significant territory”
* Financial Times : “US grows doubtful Ukraine counteroffensive can quickly succeed”
The impression that one gets from all this is that a new information campaign has begun.
As was explained in this recent analysis about how “A Vicious Blame Game Is Breaking Out After The Counteroffensive Predictably Failed”, everyone’s now pointing fingers out of desperation to eschew their own responsibility for this spectacular disaster, which set this latest media trend- into motion. The average Westerner is now either very confused if they’re a hardcore pro-Kiev supporter or feels vindicated if they were against funding the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine.
In any case, the point is that the Western public is finally discovering the truth about this conflict, both in terms of the counteroffensive’s failure as well as Ukrainians’ fatigue and frustration with everything. The first revelation proves that their tens of billions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-provided funding for the counteroffensive failed to achieve any military dividends while the second suggests that Ukrainians aren’t as gung-ho about fighting as before. Taken together, they hint that a ceasefire is possible.
Regrettably, “US Policymakers Are Caught In A Dilemma Of Their Own Making After The Failed Counteroffensive”, which the preceding hyperlinked analysis explains is due to them sabotaging peace talks last spring and then declining to resume them last winter. Since then, the path towards peace has become much more complex since the top four stakeholders in this proxy war – Russia, the US, Ukraine, and Poland – have increasingly divergent interests that thus greatly impede the possibility of a ceasefire.
Even so, the two revelations that the MSM just shared help shift Western public opinion in support of that scenario. The first one about the counteroffensive’s failure is enough for the average person to turn against continuing the proxy war, while the second absolves the most brainwashed among them of guilt by informing them that a growing number of Ukrainians want to end it too. Nobody can be “more pro-Ukrainian than the Ukrainians themselves” so that group would feel pressured to go along with this.
Simply put, what’s taking place is a “de-programming operation” aimed at reversing the effect that pro-Ukrainian/-war and anti-peace/-Russian propaganda had on the Western masses. The purpose is to precondition them for accepting the scenario of peace talks and the resultant ceasefire that they could lead to if successful. Even if the aforesaid doesn’t transpire, the impact that the MSM’s latest information campaign will have on reshaping the Western public’s perceptions will likely be irreversible.
Desperate U.S. Hawks Face Tough Choice in Ukraine
By Ted Galen Carpenter | The Libertarian Institute | August 22, 2023
Even during the period of wild optimism in the United States during 2022 and early 2023 about Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russian forces, there was a small, dark cloud of doubt about what the Joe Biden administration would do if the prospects of victory unraveled. That question has now become more pertinent and urgent as Kiev’s vaunted offensive clearly is faltering. Territorial gains in Russian-occupied regions are minimal, and they have occurred only with great cost in the lives of Ukrainian troops. For Ukraine’s forces, the war has become a meat grinder reminiscent of the fighting in World War I. Attacks on entrenched Russian defenses have proven to be horrifically costly in terms of both personnel and military hardware.
Hawks in the United States and other NATO members are reacting in two rather different ways. One faction, typified by the latest propaganda campaign undertaken by Defending Democracy Together, headed by Bill Kristol, has redoubled lobbying efforts to give Kiev more potent weapons with longer ranges so that Ukraine can launch larger and more frequent attacks inside Russia. Through a new front group, Republicans for Ukraine, neo-conservative stalwarts insist, “Supporting Ukraine is in the best interests of the United States and the best traditions of the Republican Party. Now is no time to give up the fight.”
At the same time, there are noticeable leaks in the news media, apparently from high-level sources, about Ukraine’s fading chances of victory. One especially important foray was a leaked report from U.S. intelligence agencies that Kiev’s current military offensive has failed to achieve its objectives. The report also expressed dissatisfaction with a growing unwillingness of Ukrainian forces to follow the advice of NATO advisers and continue to mount frontal assaults on Russian defenses. There was grousing from American sources about the Ukrainians becoming excessively “casualty averse.”
Even some staunch congressional supporters of Ukraine concede that the war may not be winnable. A corollary to that grudging acknowledgement are the hints coming out of Europe that peace negotiations may need to commence soon, even if the ultimate settlement requires Volodymyr Zelensky’s government to make territorial concessions to Russia. Perhaps even more indicative of the shifting attitude among portions of America’s opinion elite is a mounting whisper campaign, as epitomized by the leaked intelligence report, to denigrate Ukraine’s military strategy and “willingness to fight.” As yet, there are only a few trial balloons conveying that message, but they hint at the onset of an effort to prepare the American public for possible abandonment of a U.S. client.
Either doubling down on the commitment to Ukraine or conducting a policy retreat entails serious perils for America’s foreign policy establishment. The Biden administration and NATO already have escalated their proxy war against Russia to reckless levels. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, NATO responded by sending large quantities of weapons to Kiev. Initially, though, those items were defensive weapons, such as Javelin anti-tank missiles, designed to thwart Russian invading forces. A gradual—and dangerous–escalation in the NATO commitment has taken place since then. Indeed, it has reached the point of equipping Ukraine’s military with heavy battle tanks and other offensive weapons. The Biden administration has been deeply involved in that process, sending Abrams tanks and Patriot missiles to Kiev. Washington has also now authorized NATO allies to transfer U.S. F-16 fighters in their arsenals to Ukraine, and U.S. officials flirt with the idea of sending such planes directly from the United States.
A key problem for establishment types who are looking for an exit from the Ukraine morass is that the Biden administration has hyped the alleged importance of events there to stratospheric levels. The president and his key advisers have insisted from the outset that the war is an existential struggle between democracy and authoritarianism and between a “rules-based” international order and the law of the jungle. It is now difficult for those same officials and their supporters to call for negotiations and a compromise peace accord.
Indeed, the Biden administration and its supporters may be doubling down on the Ukraine commitment. In mid-August, the president asked Congress to approve another $24 billion in economic and military aid to Kiev, despite public opinion polls showing rapidly declining support for that option.
If the administration chooses a more prudent approach (however belatedly), the nightmare of a direct military clash between NATO and Russia would fade. The cost in terms of credibility for Western foreign policy hawks would be considerable, however. They would have to implicitly admit yet another U.S.-led interventionist crusade had failed. Coming on the heels of the fiascos in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan, public (and even congressional) discontent with that approach to world affairs could rise sharply. The images of the humiliating, chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 are especially fresh.
Escalation, though, would likely prove futile as well as excessively dangerous. Ukraine has served effectively as NATO’s bloody pawn, but its usefulness in the campaign to weaken Russia is drawing to a close. The apparent failure of Kiev’s current military offensive confirms that future significant gains are improbable. It is uncertain, though, if America’s foreign policy hawks are smart enough to abandon a used pawn. The danger still exists that they may instead succumb to their own propaganda and conclude that the Ukraine war really is an existential struggle requiring the West to double down on its commitment to Kiev.
Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. Dr. Carpenter also served in various policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. He is the author of thirteen books and more than 1,200 articles on international affairs and the threat that the U.S. national security state poses to peace and civil liberties at home and around the world. Dr. Carpenter’s latest book is “Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy” (2022)
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USS Liberty Massacre: A Pivotal Moment in the Hostile Takeover of America
By Kevin Barrett | Crescent | Dhu al-Qa’dah 24, 1445
In corporate America, hostile takeovers are commonplace. They occur when an aggressor—a larger corporation or rich individuals—seizes control of a smaller corporation without asking permission.
What few recognize is that the United States itself has been subjected to a hostile takeover. Since the aggressor, the illegitimate settler colony known as “Israel,” is much smaller than the US, the takeover has necessarily been surreptitious.
As of June, 2024, Israel’s gradual takeover of the US has become obvious and undeniable—a proverbial “elephant in the living room.” … continue
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